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Power in Literature Short Stories: Part 6 508 Views
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Description:
Textual Evidence: “Picking apart quotes is important in literary analysis.” Just make sure you remember how to put them back together again. Now is it, “I know why the caged bird sings” or “the bird I caged sings. Know why?” We’re going with the latter.
Transcript
- 00:01
We speak student!
- 00:04
Power in Literature: Textual Evidence
- 00:07
à la Shmoop.
- 00:09
So as we think through
- 00:12
the process of showing and not telling and
Full Transcript
- 00:15
the elements and weapons that writers use to kinda deploy
- 00:19
their wares, talk to us how that works
- 00:22
as we analyze things with textual evidence
- 00:25
What is textual evidence?
- 00:28
The number one most important thing in literary analysis
- 00:31
is textual evidence.
- 00:35
You will see
- 00:37
high school students, college students, PhD students, professors
- 00:41
analyze literature and they’re just like,
- 00:43
"This is what I think happened,"
- 00:45
and you’re like, “you can’t do that,” you have to say:
- 00:48
“this is what I think, because…” and then you pull out a quote.
- 00:52
And you say, “here’s what it says in the book and I’m gonna analyze that.”
- 00:56
I like to call that "close reading" because you’re reading it closely.
- 00:59
You’re pulling out a quote and saying “see that word choice?”
- 01:01
Using that word makes us think that the character is actually feeling this way
- 01:07
even though you know the author said they’re feeling this way.
- 01:11
So really picking apart quotes is so important in literary analysis
- 01:15
and it doesn’t always have to be a quote you can kinda just mention a more
- 01:18
general concept that's happening in the book
- 01:20
but if you write an essay and you just go off in your own little world and
- 01:24
don't bring it back to the text, you're not doing solid literary analysis.
- 01:28
What is the best way to obtain textual evidence?
- 01:31
Well because I love literarture I think the best way to read literature
- 01:35
is just to read it through first.
- 01:37
Sometimes you don’t have time to read the book twice
- 01:40
but if you do, I would suggest reading through once
- 01:43
to just feel it
- 01:45
that’s how literature was intended.
- 01:47
Authors don't write books
- 01:48
expecting students to write term papers about them
- 01:53
They write them because you know, it evokes this humanity from us
- 01:56
and makes us feel. So I like to read a story or a book first
- 02:00
and then I go back and do the underlining and the highlighting, preparing your text
- 02:05
and picking out key moments.
- 02:07
Got it, okay
- 02:08
Okay so that was symbols, settings and themes
- 02:11
a la Shmoop with Deb Tennen.
- 02:13
And we’ll look for you on our website.
- 02:16
Come. Bye
- 02:20
What is textual evidence? What is the best way to obtain textual evidence?
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